Document processing devices, such as multifunction peripheral (MFP) devices, photocopiers, and laser printers can be used to create both simple documents and complex printed media applications, such as business cards, postcards, books, booklets, photographs, photo books, pamphlets, forms, catalogs, manuals, course packs, greeting cards, directories, folded brochures, letterhead, CD jewel case inserts, and other printed media applications. Proper production of such printed media applications often requires the use of separate finishing devices after printing or copying is complete. Examples of finishing devices include cutters, slicing machines, scoring machines, creasers, collaters, trimmers, punchers, binding machines, stitching machines, embossing machines, diecutting machines, shrink-packaging machines, coating machines, and multi-function finishers.
For many print jobs, a human user typically selects numerous options, such as which printing device and finishing device will process the print job, how the print media will be processed, and what parameter values to select, such as the number of copies to print, the specific pages to be printed, a particular size of media and a particular type of media. However, as the number of print options increase, it becomes increasingly difficult for a user to determine which printing device should handle a print job and which finishing device should process the printed media from the printing device, especially due to the varying characteristics (of each device) that affect the overall cost of the print job and the time it takes to process the print job.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.